There are a couple decisions like this scattered throughout the language: all variables being global by default, the fact that you can't put choice branches in conditional branches, the way that lists are like five different things all rolled into one concept. If ink were a programming language, it would be a deeply frustrating one! But it's a narrative language, and these are extremely solid narrative choices. Global variables mean stories have interesting consequences; choice branches being disallowed in conditional branches means you can't just nest conditionals forever; lists are fine-tuned to simulate large amounts of world-state. It all makes sense, as long as you cut with the grain!
Another way to think of this is that we're so used to "conforms closely to the conceptual and literal architecture of the hardware/software stack it's running on" being this inviolable constraint on programming language / tool design that we're ruling out a ton of incredibly useful stuff that prioritizes "conformance to a particular creative domain and how humans think about creative problems".
Increasingly, the value of hardware and software advances should be to liberate us from the former so we can focus on / broaden the range of possible valuable approaches to the latter.
